Saturday, May 21, 2016

He works for the well-known law firm of Delay, Linger, and Wait. Acually, John Emerson is the lawyer for the Charleston County School District, but delay, linger, and wait are his mantras. Why should Superintendent Postlewaite keep the lawyer hired by the former superintendent? He should go post-haste!The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) complaint revealed this week shows everything that is wrong with how CCSD has communicated with the community in the past. Does the new superintendent want the community to believe her administration lacks transparency? If she keeps Emerson, we will.

Lawyer Jay Bender, a Freedom of Information Act specialist who represents The Post and Courier, called the district’s reasoning [i.e., Emerson's] “absolutely absurd.” He said the district is flouting the state’s open records law by failing to turn over the documents more than three months after the newspaper filed a FOIA request.

“I don’t know what it is that makes cops and school boards think they can game the system and you will go away and that the public will never know anything unpleasant ever happened,” Bender said.